Florida Gives Democrats Reason To Smile

Registration, Fund-raising Bolster Kerry Campaign

HOLLYWOOD -- Florida's Democrats, mobilizing earlier than ever for a presidential election, have ample cause for optimism in November.

Democratic voter registration is outpacing Republican registration in the heart of the "Interstate-4 corridor" that will be pivotal in this election.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry is favored among the fast-growing and swing-voting Hispanic community of Central Florida. Kerry even is making inroads among younger Cuban-Americans in South Florida who are adding a moderate voice to Miami's Republican exile community.

The Kerry campaign is organizing early, with a dozen field operatives at work in Florida and a state director who arrived this weekend -- earlier than Democrats have targeted Florida in the past.

And early on, Kerry and allied committees have outspent President Bush in television advertising in the most critical, independent-minded markets of this TV-driven state -- one of the few states on which the 2004 election is likely to turn.

"Come November, I'm afraid it's all going to boil down to Florida again," Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said Saturday, as 1,500 Democrats from across the state assembled at a Hollywood oceanfront resort for an annual party fund-raising dinner.

For all the hope that Kerry holds for Florida -- the state Bush claimed by 537 contested votes in 2000 -- the senator from Massachusetts also faces daunting opposition in a huge Bush machine here. The Bush campaign, counting 50,000 volunteers in Florida, plans to station a precinct captain in all 6,700 precincts on Election Day.

This weekend, the Bush camp took its organization out for a "test drive," launching thousands of phone calls by volunteers who are identifying friendly voters and pledging to roust them on Election Day. Next weekend, these volunteers will practice their steps with precinct canvassing.

"We like the magnitude of our grass-roots campaign, but we also like how efficient it is," says Reed Dickens, a Bush spokesman whose campaign is building a computer file of voters counted on to turn out for the president. "We actually hold our volunteers accountable to produce results. We measure their work."

Nevertheless, several factors point toward another close election in Florida, which brought the nation to a standstill with its 36-day dispute over the 2000 ballots that eventually handed Bush the White House. And this is not lost on the party's national leaders.

Sen. John Edwards, the charismatic Democrat from North Carolina considered as a possible running mate for Kerry, came to stir Florida's Democrats at their Jefferson-Jackson Dinner here.

"The polls in general are favorable" for Kerry in Florida, Edwards said Saturday after a party rally that attracted 200 people to a beachside band shell. "I sense on the ground energy and excitement for the campaign."

Among the factors offering Kerry encouragement this year:

In Orange County, which backed a Democratic candidate for president in 2000 for the first time in a half-century, the party's narrow majority has widened with 26,000 voters added since 2000. The GOP has added about 11,000.

In a broader region reached by Orlando-area television stations, Hispanics account for nearly one in five voters. They sided with Al Gore in 2000, yet helped re-elect the president's brother, Gov. Jeb Bush, in 2002, making them prime targets.

Kerry held a comfortable advantage over Bush among these voters -- Kerry was favored among 54 percent, Bush 33 percent -- in a statewide survey of Hispanic voters that Miami-based pollster Sergio Bendixen conducted in late April.

In the bellwether Tampa area, the state's top TV market, Kerry held a 10-point lead over Bush among Hispanics in Bendixen's survey -- Kerry 48, Bush 38.

Among the Cuban-born voters of the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area, who account for nearly half the state's Latino voters, Bush holds overwhelming sway -- favored by 80-12 over Kerry. Yet among younger Cuban-Americans, Bush's support registered at 54 percent, Kerry's 33, in Bendixen's survey.

These younger voters could deny Bush the 80 percent majority of the Cuban community in South Florida that he's counting on.

Other forces are at play as well.

Taleb Salhab, Orlando-based chairman of Florida's Arab-American Leadership Council, says sentiment has shifted among some 200,000 Arab-Americans living mainly in Central and South Florida.

"Traditionally, our community has been conservative, and over 70 percent voted for Bush," said Salhab, leading a voter-registration drive here Saturday. "This year, it's the exact opposite."

The Bush campaign has aired more than $15 million of TV ads in Florida since March, more than in any other state. Kerry and committees backing him have aired nearly as much, $14 million.